Many of the type of small business people he represents believe that good management is being able to boss around a compliant workforce. His 1950s values are mocked by his opponents, but they easily explain his obsession with reducing employee rights. First and foremost is Howard - son of a petrol-station operator from Earlwood, suburban lawyer and endorsing top-down authority all his life. With these major changes achieved, why then does the government continue to put IR 'reform' at the top of its agenda? I think it's because of the origins of most twenty first century Tories. Wages are now more dispersed, employment security has been reduced, hours are longer and extend over a wider range, and the protection provided by unions has been greatly diminished with their rapid decline. Reserve Bank statistics show that as a result of these trends workers' share of GDP has declined from 66 per cent in 1974 to 54 per cent in 2004.5 Within one generation the old award system based on a 'basic' or minimum wage together with additional pay for skill and/or experience has declined from being the prime determinant of Australian living standards to now playing only a peripheral role. The dramatic feminisation of the workforce accompanying these moves has led to more than a third of the workforce now working either as part-timers or casuals or both. Industry-standard awards have been stripped back and localised agreements - with the emphasis on individualism - have gained ground.
Thus we have witnessed action to achieve 'deregulation' and 'flexibility' in the labour market. They instead fervently believe that the market for labour is similar to any other market and would everywhere work best with little or no regulation. They have probably not bothered to read the findings of the AWIRS Surveys or other in-depth studies such as the BCA-sponsored study of excellent workplaces. Unfortunately the BCA has not since publicised the findings of this study and it doesn't even appear on its web-site.Ĭhicago-school economists and their media proponents have been calling for what they call industrial relations 'reform' for over twenty years. Some followed award provisions whilst others extensively negotiated for enterprise agreements. The excellent workplaces had a mixture of collective and individual work contracts. The first of these is extraordinary in that the study clearly showed that having strong unions and even historical industrial conflict did not prevent such workplaces from being excellent. They were: working arrangements and representation characteristics of the business (greenfield/brownfield) and workforce composition. Significantly, three qualities were found as being points of indifference in achieving excellence, in other words, qualities that did not really matter in creating an excellent workplace.
#Julius sumner miller lesson worksheets sound drivers#
Fifteen key drivers of excellence were identified: quality of the working relationships workplace leadership being able to have a say clear values being safe good built environment recruitment reasonable pay and conditions effective feedback autonomy and uniqueness ownership and identity learning passion fun and community connections. Sixteen separate workplaces from 10 companies were identified with the assistance of the BCA. In 2001 the Business Council of Australia supported a study to identify what makes an 'excellent' Australian workplace.4 The study sought to examine leading workplaces which were exemplars of productivity growth and to crystallise what made them 'excellent'. 1 In 1995 only 27 per cent of managers answered that they felt awards/agreements, unfair dismissal laws and employee/union delegate resistance impeded efficiency changes, whilst a total of 65 per cent listed financial/economic, head office management or lack of autonomy as constraining efficiency changes.2 Many more managers (56 per cent) said they felt constrained by other management and various other issues. Salient findings from the 1990 Survey included 42 per cent of managers indicating they felt no IR constraints in carrying out their role and that awards, and union delegates amounted to only 14 per cent of their total constraints.
1500 union delegates and the impressive figure of 19000 employees from these workplaces were also surveyed. The second Survey covered interviews with general managers and employee relations managers at about 2700 workplaces with more than twenty employees. Known as the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys (AWIRS), the first surveyed about 2000 Australian workplaces with five or more employees and involved about 4500 interviews. The first and only studies of the Australian workplace in the twentieth century took place in 19.
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